My kids were taught in public schools about every culture on the planet in elementary and middle school--except for European and American. My daughter is only now learning about World War II and the recent history of the West, and she is a freshman in high school. If it were not for home reading and education, they would know nothing of recent European history, or any American history past the Williamsburg colony that did not center on Native Americans.

The fact that these classes in Islam and non-Western culture are being generated now is not the issue as much as the motivation of the liberal-arts faculties in creating them, which is apparently to teach students that America is the source of all the evil in the world, and that our culture is bad.

The engineering and technical schools seem fairly immune to this political crap, probably due to their inherent and inescapable links with objective reality. They are also having few problems with math and science for the same reasons.

And, just out of curiosity, when we do "educate" ourselves on the Islamic culture, exactly what values can we be expected to learn from the Taliban, or the Saudi kings, or any of the other thugs currently running things in most of the Arab world? Feminism? Democracy? Individual rights? Freedom? Tell me ONE THING that sets the present-day Islamic world above us, that we can learn from them and emulate. Do we let Osama bin Laden tell us how it is? Or Saddam Hussein?

The concept that Western Culture may actually BE superior to most others in the modern world is anathema to the left and the academics, almost to the point of generating apoplexy in such people. Even moderate liberals violently reject the idea on instinct, despite the fact that all objective evidence shows this to be true.

The Islamic world gave us a lot--1,000 years ago. What have they done for us lately?